As is well known, many building structures include interior wall panels, sometimes known as "Sheetrock" or the like. Most building structures also include a plurality of electrical wall outlets as well.
In cutting a wall panel to accommodate a wall outlet box, even the most experienced artisan in the electrical wiring art sometimes experiences difficulties, and must always be exceptionally careful in cutting through the interior wall of a building in order to get the right size opening, at the proper location for the outlet box which is located on the opposite side of the wall.
Accordingly, the building art has included several proposals for accurately defining the location of an electrical wall outlet before cutting the wall panel. However, marking devices, such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,898,688, often are somewhat cumbersome to use and are not amenable to a variety of applications. For example, these devices generally are used before the receptacle element is installed into the outlet box thereby requiring the electrician to work through the wall panel to install such element. Not only is this slightly inconvenient for the electrician, it may create a possibility of damaging the wall panel.
Furthermore, marking devices, such as that disclosed in the aforementioned patent, include elements which are superfluous in many instances and thus can be overly expensive to manufacture and sell as well as difficult to use.
Therefore, there is a need for a marking device which can be used with or without the electrical receptacle element installed in the outlet box and which is inexpensive to manufacture and which is easy to use as compared to existing marking devices.